Rotterdam Square Mall sale is still in the works, owner says

The prospective buyer is Via Properties, an Istanbul-based developer

Updated 7:31 pm, Tuesday, April 28, 2015

A sale of Rotterdam Square Mall is still pending, owner Mike Kohan said Tuesday.

Kohan had said in March that he planned to sell the deeply troubled mall, which recently lost one of its anchors in Macy's.

Reached Tuesday, he said that's still the plan. "We haven't closed the transaction yet," he said.

He confirmed the prospective buyer is Via Properties, an Istanbul-based developer of hotels, theme parks, outlet malls and other retail properties.

In September, the Orlando Sentinel reported that another of Kohan's malls, Lake Square Mall, which he'd bought just a few months before, was sold to the same company.

Kohan's company, Kohan Retail Investment Group, purchased Rotterdam Square for $8.5 million from the Macerich Corporation in January. Since then, the mall has continued to empty out and dealt with a daylong shutdown of its electricity over an unpaid bill.

Kohan had repeatedly said he had hoped to revitalize Rotterdam Square, and he had pegged his hopes on the planned casino project in Schenectady bringing in new customers.

The mall's two remaining anchors, Sears and Kmart, have struggled financially, downsizing and closing stores nationwide.

Kohan, whose given name is Mehran Kohansiek, has a history of problems at malls he owns, but he has said that is because he buys distressed malls.

Rotterdam Square has 583,937 square feet of leasable space. At the time he bought the mall, Kohan described it as 86 percent occupied.

Now the mall's website lists 40 of 91 retail spaces as available or 44 percent. CoStar Group, a Washington, D.C.-based provider of real estate information, defines a troubled mall as one in which 20 percent of the space is vacant.